


That Would Be Enough

by PR_Booklover711



Category: Daredevil (TV), The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Getting Together, Hamilton Lyrics, Hamilton References, Light Angst, Post-Season/Series 01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-27
Updated: 2021-01-27
Packaged: 2021-03-13 14:07:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29029911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PR_Booklover711/pseuds/PR_Booklover711
Summary: Getting together ficCame about thanks to reading Kastle fics and having Hamilton songs come up on my Spotify.Karen singsSet post season 1 of The Punisher because I haven’t watched any further yet and refuse to believe season 2 is anything other than those 2 being cute and also badass together.
Relationships: Frank Castle/Karen Page
Kudos: 2





	That Would Be Enough

**Author's Note:**

> Probably ooc as hell but the idea popped up half baked in my head and wouldn’t leave me alone. I wanted Karen to sing this song that I think fits the two of them really well, but had no idea how to get to that point.   
> If you like cute, soft Kastle then hopefully you will enjoy.   
> Probably the most random fic ever, but hopefully someone will enjoy it. 
> 
> Disclaimer: I do not own marvel, the punisher, Hamilton or any characters etc.

That Would Be Enough

After yet another close call with someone who didn’t appreciate Karen exposing his dirty secrets for all of New York to see, Ellison had forced Karen to take some time off away from the paper. The problem was, she was so used to having a million and one things to do each day, that she no longer knew how to relax and just sit around doing nothing. 

She hadn’t set an alarm, but still awoke early, and, unable to remain in bed once she was awake, had proceeded to grab a mug of coffee and get ready like it was a normal day. She had filled her day with boring tasks that she hadn’t had the time for recently. Her grocery shopping was done for the next week, she had cleaned her entire apartment and had even found a Youtube video that showed her how to mend her leaking faucet (after she had gone to several different hardware stores to find the right parts).

Karen had also been keeping herself busy in a vain attempt to avoid thinking about one Frank Castle. It had taken him a while to reach out to her, after the events at the carousel, but once he had, he’d started visiting her frequently. It wasn’t that Karen didn’t enjoy his company, quite the opposite in fact! And that was where her trouble lay; she had come to the realisation that she had developed feelings for the man that anyone else would call a mass murdering psychopath.   
Logically, Karen could see that those people were right in labelling him a murderer, but she saw the other parts of him too, the man who loved so deeply that it wrecked him, the one who couldn’t leave stray dogs to suffer on the side of the road, the person who cared most out of anyone whether she was safe or not.   
Those were the parts of him that she had started to fall for, but the deeper she searched inside herself, the more she found that she could accept the other part of him too. After all, it’s not like she was innocent. She knew what it was like to watch the life drain out of someone’s eyes and not regret being the one who pulled the trigger. That was what scared her; their similarities, not their differences. 

They had started hanging out together, walking down by the river, drinking shitty diner coffee somewhere, he even took her to a gun range once and had been shocked by her level of competency, both with her .380 and with a shotgun. But most of all, they would sit in her apartment, sharing stories and drinking the night away with either too many pots of coffee, or various bottles of alcohol, depending on their moods. They had even got to the point that one night, after a fair amount of whiskey had been consumed, Karen had handed him the spare key to her apartment and told him he was welcome any time. 

It had been over a month since that night and he was just as comfortable in her apartment as if it were his own. Numerous times Karen had dragged herself home from work absolutely exhausted, to find him already there, cooking dinner for her. He was a fantastic chef, just to add to the list of reasons why she was falling for the man. 

The problem with all of this was that she wanted to take her relationship with Frank further, to be in an actual relationship with him, but she wasn’t sure that she could do that. At first, it was that she wasn’t sure that he would ever be able to move past what had happened to Maria, Lisa and Frank Jr. She never wanted, nor expected, to be able to replace them, but for a while she truly believed that the part of him that could love and be in a relationship had died with them. She saw the love that he still held for them whenever he told her stories about his life before, and it consumed his whole heart, but she had assumed that there would never be enough space there for him to love again.   
Every now and then however, she would spot him staring at her with hints of that same affection hidden deep in his eyes. If she was injured, he would check her over for cuts and bruises with a bit of panic in his gaze, like he was suddenly reminded that she could be taken from him too. When she was tired and falling asleep over whatever new plate of food he had given her, he would gently shake her shoulder and tell her she should get to bed, taking the plate away and dropping a kiss into her hair, or onto her forehead if she had managed to find the energy to look up at him, and he would smile down at her with an emotion that she had now decided could have no other name but love, his features softened by it and his eyes lit from within. 

So after coming to the conclusion that he could feel the same way about her as she did for him, Karen was left with the realisation that it wasn’t him stopping them from moving forward into a romantic relationship, it was her. Even though his nightly activities as the Punisher had greatly reduced, he would still show up from time to time with bruises marring his features or he would topple through her window from the fire escape late at night, bleeding and asking her to grab the first aid kit.   
Her issue, she had realised after a night of sobering introspection, was that she had already spent so long saying goodbye to him and not knowing if she would ever see him again and it always ripped her heart out each and every time. She still dreamed about that stupid elevator in the hotel, after they’d been blown up and she’d forced him to take her hostage, so that he could escape from the cops. She remembered standing there, with his forehead pressing against hers, thinking this was the last time she would ever see him alive. She had been depressed for days after that, until he got word to her that he was alive and free, but he wouldn’t be able to see her for a while.   
She was scared of acknowledging her feelings, of being in a relationship with him and then losing him because some criminal got a lucky shot, or some police or government official decided to reinstate the shoot to kill order on him. It would be painful enough already, she didn’t know what she would do if she let him in completely and then he was ripped away from her forever. 

The fear of saying goodbye to him had started to lessen each time he came over for a social visit instead of a medical emergency, but it still lurked in the back of her mind and decided to torture her at the most inopportune times. So now she was stuck debating with herself whether it was worth the risk. She couldn’t be the one to ask him to stop going out at night, but she would be lying if she said she didn’t want him to pack it all in and just stay with her. Each time she thought about it though, she found herself admitting that her feelings for him had grown even more and she was starting to believe that it would be worth it, no matter what. Having some time with Frank had to be better than never being honest and regretting it forever, right? Now she just had to find the courage to admit that when he was around, and finally tell him how she felt. 

At some point in the afternoon she had decided to kill time by cooking and baking a variety of dishes. She had put her music on and had danced and sung for hours as she made her own pasta sheets that she then used to make a lasagne, and created various desserts. She had started off doing brownies and cookies, and then when she saw she had more time to kill, had started making millionaires shortbread, as she knew that making the caramel would require a lot of time and attention to get it right. She was going to be eating desserts for days, but she figured she’d have plenty of time to indulge in her imposed time off. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Frank was searching through his key chain for the key to Karen’s door when he heard what he assumed was a radio playing. He didn’t recognise the song, but there was a female voice singing about being a wife or something, it wasn’t clear through the door. 

But once he entered the apartment, he was shocked at the sight that greeted him. It wasn’t just a radio playing, Karen was singing along to whatever the song was. He hadn’t known that she could sing, but she sounded like an angel! 

“Look at where you are,  
Look at where you started.  
The fact that you’re alive is a miracle.  
Just stay alive, that would be enough.”

She still had her back to him, not yet having noticed that he had entered her apartment. She was standing at the sink, washing something up by the looks of it, but for the second two lines Karen had abandoned the soapy water, getting more into the song, her hands rising slightly. She sounded a bit emotional. There was a catch in her throat as she begged someone to ‘just stay alive’.  
It took frank’s breath away, she sounded like she truly meant those words, and for a second he allowed himself the fantasy of believing she was singing about him.   
For the next verse her voice dropped back off a bit, not giving the same sense of feeling to the words, which he found himself glad for as he listened to the lyrics, because he didn’t think he could take it if he found out that this was her way of telling the world she was pregnant with another man’s child. Nor did he wish to think of his own that he had lost in this particular moment.  
(“And if this child  
Shares a fraction of your smile,  
Or a fragment of your mind, look out world   
That would be enough.”)

Karen grabbed a dishcloth and dried her hands, still singing softly along with the words, matching the original artist note for note.  
“I don’t pretend to know,   
The challenges you’re facing.  
The worlds you keep erasing and creating in your mind.”

“But I’m not afraid,” she sang suddenly, with such fervour Frank drew in a sharp inhale, the sound somehow carrying to Karen over the music and she span around to face him. She faltered slightly and sang the next line more quietly, looking down at the ground. “I know who I married.”   
Frank’s face scrunched slightly at that, his mind providing a quick flash of memory of Maria in her wedding gown, but he quickly shook the thought away. She was gone and nothing he did would ever bring her back, but he had made a choice to keep living, and spending time with Karen had shown him that he didn’t want to go back to living alone as he had the past few years. 

Karen took a quick breath, as if to steel herself and looked up directly into Frank’s eyes and poured her whole heart into the next lines.  
“So long as you come home at the end of the day,  
That would be enough.”   
He felt his mouth drop open slightly. She had sung that directly to him, and it didn’t feel just like a performance she had decided to randomly put on, it felt like a promise, and he found himself wanting that, to be able to come home to her at the end of each day, to be with her. He had been waiting on a sign from her, that she wanted to be with him just as much as he wanted to be with her. Was this it? Even though this couldn’t have been planned, as she had no idea he was coming over, she certainly seemed to be embracing the message now.

“We don’t need a legacy,  
We don’t need money.  
If I could grant you peace of mind  
If you could let me inside your heart”  
She had shifted closer to him now, her hand delicately placed against his chest, over his heart as she sang that last line. He hadn’t missed the tremble in her hand as it rose, could feel the nerves coming off of her, but he was captivated by her voice and just smiled back at her. She already held what was left of his tattered, broken heart. He’d dare say she had even been fixing it. And she had always helped quiet his mind, from the moment she helped him remember, when he was strapped to that hospital bed. She had been the only thing to give him peace since he’d woken up with a bullet lodged in his skull. No matter what was happening around them, she calmed him and helped focus him. What was this song? It certainly felt fitting. 

“Oh, let me be a part of the narrative,  
In the story they will write someday.  
Let this moment be the first chapter,”  
Karen smiled at him and gently placed her other hand against his right cheek and stroked across the skin under his eye. It was only this movement that made him realise that a tear had escaped and rolled down his cheek. He took a deep breath to settle himself and his emotions that had been starting to overwhelm him. He felt so much love for this beautiful woman in front of him. He had doubted and fought himself about it before, but there was no way this could be anything but love for him, he felt it in his entire body.

“Where you decide to stay…” Karen sang, leaning back from him slightly, closing her eyes and putting power into the note that he didn’t know she had, drawing it out and making the sound ring out through her apartment, clear and high like a bell. 

She straightened herself back up and looked back into his eyes once more.   
“And I could be enough”  
He found himself nodding at her words. Didn’t she know she was already far more than he ever deserved? He raised his hands to gently grab at her hips, not pulling her to him, but just holding her, his thumbs sweeping back and forth over her stomach. 

Closing her eyes once more, and moving her hand from his cheek to the back of his head to bring their foreheads together, she sang the final lines softly, so quietly that if he hadn’t been so close to her, he would have missed them.  
“And we could be enough.  
That would be enough.”

Frank felt her draw in a deep breath and felt her tremble slightly against him. He opened his eyes and she suddenly looked far more nervous than she had when she was singing, pulling her lip between her teeth and starting to withdraw from him, opening her eyes, but only to stare at their feet. He squeezed her gently where his hands were still on her hips and managed to whisper out the only question that mattered in that moment.  
“Did you mean it?” He hadn’t wanted to get his hopes up too high, but God, it had certainly felt like she’d meant every damn word and he prayed he was right.   
She just nodded slightly against him, but it was enough to make him smile wider than he had in years. He raised one of his hands from her hip to gently tug her lip out from where she’d been chewing on it and then tilted his head from where it still rested against hers to close the distance between them and kissed her, slow and sweet, trying to pour into it everything he was feeling.

His heart had been pounding since he’d come in through the door and the emotions had risen more and more within him with every word she sang. He knew she hadn’t written it, but damn if parts of it didn’t feel like it was written just for them. He knew him going out as the Punisher was a worry for her, but he wasn’t sure he would ever be able to truly give it up. But if all he had to do was make sure that he came home to her at the end of the day, then he wouldn’t let her down. Maybe they could be enough for each other. He knew he could never be good enough to deserve her, but he hoped he could be enough for her. 

He only realised that he’d said some of that out loud when she smiled at him and told him, “You’re worth the risk, Frank Castle.” She pulled him towards her once more and they lost themselves in each other. 

After a while he pulled back to look at her. “So,” he said, casually, “you can sing.”  
She let out a peal of laughter that sounded a little disbelieving, shook her head and replied, “Kinda, I guess?”  
“You guess? Karen you were amazing!”   
She just smiled at him and hummed in response, content to just enjoy the moment, safely wrapped up in his arms. 

“What is it from?” He asked her quietly.  
“Hmm?”  
“The song, what is it?”  
“Oh,” She answered, “It’s from a musical about the founding of America. It’s called ‘That Would Be Enough’, from the musical ‘Hamilton’”.  
“You’re trying to tell me that song is about the founding of America? Nah, you’re pullin’ my leg,” he laughed.  
“No, it’s actually really interesting and it’s more about the different characters relationships with one another. We can watch it if you like. They filmed it on broadway and released it on Disney+. I’ll always regret not going to see it live with the original cast though,” Seeing his questioning look Karen answered his unspoken question, “It was just too expensive for me to go at the time.”  
“Ok, I’ll watch it with you,” he smiled at the happy little noise Karen made at that. “If you’ll sing the songs to me,” he requested.  
“Well, it’s not all slow songs like that and I wouldn’t want to ruin the experience for you, but pay attention to which songs you like and I’ll sing them to you later,” she promised.

And that was how Frank found himself cuddled up with Karen, watching a musical of all things, stuffing his face with the little desserts she had made earlier. He could hardly remember a time when he had been happier. Especially when Karen couldn’t help herself and sang along to a few of the lines, or when she let him feed her bites of food and then turned her face up to kiss him afterwards. Life was finally starting to get good again, and it was more than enough.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!   
> If you enjoyed it I would love to hear from you!   
> Not beta read so any mistakes are my own. Let me know if I missed something that you’d like to be corrected.   
> If you enjoyed my writing and have an idea that you’d like to suggest, feel free. Doesn’t have to be for this show or pairing. Talk to me about it and I’d be happy to try my best at it for you.   
> I can be found on tumblr at Fangirl98711 if you’d rather speak over there.   
> Stay safe everyone!


End file.
